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Re:SIMULATION & Mirror Neurons

Zach, Briefly for mo - simulation is a huge area in cognitive linguistics, as in philosophy - I hope you are making some reference to it. The way the flight

Message 1 of 4
, Aug 7 5:24 AM

Zach,

Briefly for mo - simulation is a huge area in
cognitive linguistics, as in philosophy - I hope you are making some
reference to it. The way the flight simulator analogy partly, but only partly,
breaks down, is that in drama and literature, (as in real life daily social
intercourse), you are continually simulating *other* people, putting yourself
into other people's shoes and indeed bodies - and not just their
situations.

I'm surprised thinking back - but maybe this is my
bad memory - that Bill Benzon & anyone of a similar mind, didn't make more
of simulation and mirror neurons.when we were all talking. This is a HUGE area
that is truly open for real and massive scientific investigation. It also united
Bill B & JC with his theme of how we learn to empathise with others through
literature (or that's my garbled memory).

The arts are absolutely essential for the study of
simulation and mirror neurons - which Lakoff, Gallese & co haven't yet
realised (although I imagine Mark Johnson would be open to it). The reason is
that artists do not just capture any old movements or or any old lines of
speech. They capture *manners* - *typical* movements and *typical*
patterns of speech.

your brain does not just simulate their particular
movement at the given point in time on that canvas - it simulates and
understands their *manner* of movement - and you can get up and dance like them,
and continue their dance, and produce *further* movements that will be a
reasonable likeness of how those dancers might dance.

Now how your brain does that is an awfully complex
operation, that will repay study, and goes beyond current mirror simulation
studies.

Ditto when a movie or play captures a character's
style of speech well, you can not only simulate/empathise with what they are
immediately saying, but understand their manner, and can creatively produce
further sentences in that style. Mimic them as professional mimics
do.

Scientists don't have the special skills of artists
- required to capture manners.

The area of simulation through the arts is so huge
that there is enough material there to start up the group again.

Zach: My research covers much of this but draw
stronger conclusions, conclusions suitable for adapting to literary criticism.
I argue that not only is literature analogous to a 'flight simulator' (I also
described how this works, from a neurocognitive standpoint, and reject some of
Oatley's top-down views on this point), butmore importantly for literary
evaluationI argue that 'good' (memorable, influential) simulators exploit and
capture the psychological nuances of simulated emotional ecologies, and that
what distinguishes good from bad literature has to do with the type, variety,
verisimilitude, development, etc., of emotional ecologies (e.g., the social
circumstances contingent on experiencing 'jealousy' in Shakespeare's Othello).

I'm starting work on my
chapter exploring simulation now. I hope that by the time Im done people
haven't either scooped or developed in parallel my conclusions, because Ive
been sitting on these arguments for a long time now, although such parallel
developments are beyond my control.

The Secrets of
Storytelling: Why We Love a Good Yarn Our love for telling tales reveals
the workings of the mind By Jeremy Hsu

When Brad Pitt tells Eric
Bana in the 2004 film Troy that "there are no pacts between lions and men," he
is not reciting a clever line from the pen of a Hollywood screenwriter. He is
speaking Achilles' words in English as Homer wrote them in Greek more than
2,000 years ago in the Iliad. The tale of the Trojan War has captivated
generations of audiences while evolving from its origins as an oral epic to
written versions and, finally, to several film adaptations. The power of this
story to transcend time, language and culture is clear even today, evidenced
by Troy's robust success around the world.

Popular tales do far more
than entertain, however. Psychologists and neuroscientists have recently
become fascinated by the human predilection for storytelling. Why does our
brain seem to be wired to enjoy stories? And how do the emotional and
cognitive effects of a narrative influence our beliefs and real-world
decisions?

The answers to these questions seem to be rooted in our
history as a social animal. We tell stories about other people and for other
people. Stories help us to keep tabs on what is happening in our communities.
The safe, imaginary world of a story may be a kind of training ground, where
we can practice interacting with others and learn the customs and rules of
society. And stories have a unique power to persuade and motivate, because
they appeal to our emotions and capacity for empathy.

A Good Yarn
Storytelling is one of the few human traits that are truly universal
across culture and through all of known history. Anthropologists find evidence
of folktales everywhere in ancient cultures, written in Sanskrit, Latin,
Greek, Chinese, Egyptian and Sumerian. People in societies of all types weave
narratives, from oral storytellers in hunter-gatherer tribes to the millions
of writers churning out books, television shows and movies. And when a
characteristic behavior shows up in so many different societies, researchers
pay attention: its roots may tell us something about our evolutionary past.

To study storytelling, scientists must first define what constitutes a
story, and that can prove tricky. Because there are so many diverse forms,
scholars often define story structure, known as narrative, by explaining what
it is not. Exposition contrasts with narrative by being a simple,
straightforward explanation, such as a list of facts or an encyclopedia entry.
Another standard approach defines narrative as a series of causally linked
events that unfold over time. A third definition hinges on the typical
narrative's subject matter: the interactions of intentional agents-characters
with minds-who possess various motivations.

However narrative is
defined, people know it when they feel it. Whether fiction or nonfiction, a
narrative engages its audience through psychological realism-recognizabl e
emotions and believable interactions among characters.

"Everyone has a
natural detector for psychological realism," says Raymond A. Mar, assistant
professor of psychology at York University in Toronto. "We can tell when
something rings false."

But the best stories-those retold through
generations and translated into other languages-do more than simply present a
believable picture. These tales captivate their audience, whose emotions can
be inextricably tied to those of the story's characters. Such immersion is a
state psychologists call "narrative transport."

Researchers have only
begun teasing out the relations among the variables that can initiate
narrative transport. A 2004 study by psychologist Melanie C. Green, now at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, showed that prior knowledge and
life experience affected the immersive experience. Volunteers read a short
story about a gay man attending his college fraternity's reunion. Those who
had friends or family members who were homosexual reported higher
transportation, and they also perceived the story events, settings and
characters to be more realistic. Transportation was also deeper for
participants with past experiences in fraternities or sororities. "Familiarity
helps, and a character to identify with helps," Green explains.

Other
research by Green has found that people who perform better on tests of
empathy, or the capacity to perceive another person's emotions, become more
easily transported regardless of the story. "There seems to be a reasonable
amount of variation, all the way up to people who can get swept away by a
Hallmark commercial," Green says.

In Another's Shoes Empathy is
part of the larger ability humans have to put themselves in another person's
shoes: we can attribute mental states-awareness, intent-to another entity.
Theory of mind, as this trait is known, is crucial to social interaction and
communal living-and to understanding stories.

Children develop theory
of mind around age four or five. A 2007 study by psychologists Daniela O'Neill
and Rebecca Shultis, both at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, found that
five-year-olds could follow the thoughts of an imaginary character but that
three-year-olds could not. The children saw model cows in both a barn and a
field, and the researchers told them that a farmer sitting in the barn was
thinking of milking the cow in the field. When then asked to point to the cow
the farmer wanted to milk, three-year-olds pointed to the cow in the barn-they
had a hard time following the character's thoughts to the cow in the field.
Five-year-olds, however, pointed to the cow in the field, demonstrating theory
of mind.

Perhaps because theory of mind is so vital to social living,
once we possess it we tend to imagine minds everywhere, making stories out of
everything. A classic 1944 study by Fritz Heider and Mary-Ann Simmel, then at
Smith College, elegantly demonstrated this tendency. The psychologists showed
people an animation of a pair of triangles and a circle moving around a square
and asked the participants what was happening. The subjects described the
scene as if the shapes had intentions and motivations- for example, "The
circle is chasing the triangles." Many studies since then have confirmed the
human predilection to make characters and narratives out of whatever we see in
the world around us.

But what could be the evolutionary advantage of
being so prone to fantasy? "One might have expected natural selection to have
weeded out any inclination to engage in imaginary worlds rather than the real
one," writes Steven Pinker, a Harvard University evolutionary psychologist, in
the April 2007 issue of Philosophy and Literature. Pinker goes on to argue
against this claim, positing that stories are an important tool for learning
and for developing relationships with others in one's social group. And most
scientists are starting to agree: stories have such a powerful and universal
appeal that the neurological roots of both telling tales and enjoying them are
probably tied to crucial parts of our social cognition.

As our
ancestors evolved to live in groups, the hypothesis goes, they had to make
sense of increasingly complex social relationships. Living in a community
requires keeping tabs on who the group members are and what they are doing.
What better way to spread such information than through storytelling?

Indeed, to this day people spend most of their conversations telling
personal stories and gossiping. A 1997 study by anthropologist and
evolutionary biologist Robin Dunbar, then at the University of Liverpool in
England, found that social topics accounted for 65 percent of speaking time
among people in public places, regardless of age or gender.
Anthropologists note that storytelling could have also persisted in human
culture because it promotes social cohesion among groups and serves as a
valuable method to pass on knowledge to future generations. But some
psychologists are starting to believe that stories have an important effect on
individuals as well-the imaginary world may serve as a proving ground for
vital social skills.

"If you're training to be a pilot, you spend time
in a flight simulator," says Keith Oatley, a professor of applied cognitive
psychology at the University of Toronto. Preliminary research by Oatley and
Mar suggests that stories may act as "flight simulators" for social life. A
2006 study hinted at a connection between the enjoyment of stories and better
social abilities. The researchers used both self-report and assessment tests
to determine social ability and empathy among 94 students, whom they also
surveyed for name recognition of authors who wrote narrative fiction and
nonnarrative nonfiction. They found that students who had had more exposure to
fiction tended to perform better on social ability and empathy tests. Although
the results are provocative, the authors caution that the study did not probe
cause and effect-exposure to stories may hone social skills as the researchers
suspect, but perhaps socially inclined individuals simply seek out more
narrative fiction.

In support for the idea that stories act as
practice for real life are imaging studies that reveal similar brain
ac­tivity during viewings of real people and animated cha­racters. In
2007 Mar conducted a study using Waking Life, a 2001 film in which live
footage of actors was traced so that the characters appear to be animated
drawings. Mar used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan volunteers'
brains as they watched matching footage of the real actors and the
corresponding animated characters. During the real footage, brain activity
spiked strongly in the superior temporal sulcus and the temporoparietal
junction, areas associated with processing biological motion. The same areas
lit up to a lesser extent for the animated footage. "This difference in brain
activation could be how we distinguish between fantasy and reality," Mar says.

As psychologists probe our love of stories for clues about our
evolutionary history, other researchers have begun examining the themes and
character types that appear consistently in narratives from all cultures.
Their work is revealing universal similarities that may reflect a shared,
evolved human psyche.

Boy Meets Girl . A 2006 study by Jonathan
Gottschall, an English professor at Washington & Jefferson College, found
relevant depictions of romantic love in folktales scattered across space and
time. The idea of romantic love has not been traditionally considered to be a
cultural universal because of the many societies in which marriage is mainly
an economic or utilitarian consideration. But Gottschall's study suggests that
rather than being a construct of certain societies, romantic love must have
roots in our common ancestry. In other words, romance-not just sex-has a
biological basis in the brain.

"You do find these commonalities, "
Gottschall says. He is one of several scholars, known informally as literary
Darwinists, who assert that story themes do not simply spring from each
specific culture. Instead the literary Darwinists propose that stories from
around the world have universal themes reflecting our common underlying
biology.

Another of Gottschall's studies published earlier this year
reveals a persistent mind-set regarding gender roles. His team did a content
analysis of 90 folktale collections, each consisting of 50 to 100 stories,
from societies running the gamut from industrial nations to hunter-gatherer
tribes. They found overwhelmingly similar gender depictions emphasizing strong
male protagonists and female beauty. To counterbalance the possibility that
male storytellers were biasing gender idealizations, the team also sampled
cultures that were more egalitarian and less patriarchal.

"We couldn't
even find one culture that had more emphasis on male beauty," Gottschall
notes, explaining that the study sample had three times as many male as
compared with female main characters and six times as many references to
female beauty as to male beauty. That difference in gender stereotypes, he
suggests, may reflect the classic Darwinian emphasis on reproductive health in
women, signified by youth and beauty, and on the desirable male ability to
provide for a family, signaled by physical power and success.

Other
common narrative themes reveal our basic wants and needs. "Narrative involves
agents pursuing some goal," says Patrick Colm Hogan, professor of English and
comparative literature at the University of Connecticut. "The standard goals
are partially a result of how our emotion systems are set up."

Hogan
does not consider himself a literary Darwinist, but his research on everything
from Hindu epic poems such as the Ramayana to modern film adaptations of
Shakespeare supports the idea that stories reveal something about human
emotions seated in the mind. As many as two thirds of the most respected
stories in narrative traditions seem to be variations on three narrative
patterns, or prototypes, according to Hogan. The two more common prototypes
are romantic and heroic scenarios-the former focuses on the trials and
travails of love, whereas the latter deals with power struggles. The third
prototype, dubbed "sacrificial" by Hogan, focuses on agrarian plenty versus
famine as well as on societal redemption. These themes appear over and over
again as humans create narrative records of their most basic needs: food,
reproduction and social status.

Happily Ever After The power of
stories does not stop with their ability to reveal the workings of our minds.
Narrative is also a potent persuasive tool, according to Hogan and other
researchers, and it has the ability to shape beliefs and change minds.

Advertisers have long taken advantage of narrative persuasiveness by
sprinkling likable characters or funny stories into their commercials. A 2007
study by marketing researcher Jennifer Edson Escalas of Vanderbilt University
found that a test audience responded more positively to advertisements in
narrative form as compared with straightforward ads that encouraged viewers to
think about the arguments for a product. Similarly, Green co-authored a 2006
study that showed that labeling information as "fact" increased critical
analysis, whereas labeling information as "fiction" had the opposite effect.
Studies such as these suggest people accept ideas more readily when their
minds are in story mode as opposed to when they are in an analytical mind-set.

Works of fiction may even have unexpected real-world effects on
people's choices. Merlot was one of the most popular red wines among Americans
until the 2005 film Sideways depicted actor Paul Giamatti as an ornery wine
lover who snubbed it as a common, inferior wine. Winemakers saw a noticeable
drop in sales of the red wine that year, particularly after Sideways garnered
national attention through several Oscar nominations.

As researchers
continue to investigate storytelling' s power and pervasiveness, they are also
looking for ways to harness that power. Some such as Green are studying how
stories can have applications in promoting positive health messages. "A lot of
problems are behaviorally based," Green says, pointing to research documenting
the influence of Hollywood films on smoking habits among teens. And Mar and
Oatley want to further examine how stories can enhance social skills by acting
as simulators for the brain, which may turn the idea of the socially crippled
bookworm on its head.

One thing is clear-although research on stories
has only just begun, it has already turned up a wealth of information about
the social roots of the human mind-and, in science, that's a happy ending.

Note: This story was originally printed with the title, "The Secrets
of Storytelling" .

Wow. I think I missed a bit of this thread (travel and illness excuses), but it is nice to see critical emphasis being placed on mirror neurons and

Message 2 of 4
, Aug 7 6:27 AM

Wow. I think I missed a bit of this thread
(travel and illness excuses), but it is nice to see critical emphasis being
placed on mirror neurons and simulation. I agree that this brings together
a couple of different, fundamental, and very important critical threads.
It also looks like these approaches will be helping to rebut the accusations of
reductionism aimed at literary and other artistic Darwinisms. From what I
can see, these different lines of research are greatly widening perceptions of
the power of art. I hope there are a few good papers and books coming out
of the various respondents' research, and that they will be readily available to
the rest of us on the list. We will all benefit from this kind of
reciprocity. JT

Briefly for mo - simulation is a huge area
in cognitive linguistics, as in philosophy - I hope you are making some
reference to it. The way the flight simulator analogy partly, but only partly,
breaks down, is that in drama and literature, (as in real life daily social
intercourse) , you are continually simulating *other* people, putting
yourself into other people's shoes and indeed bodies - and not just their
situations.

I'm surprised thinking back - but maybe this is
my bad memory - that Bill Benzon & anyone of a similar mind, didn't make
more of simulation and mirror neurons.when we were all talking. This is a HUGE
area that is truly open for real and massive scientific investigation. It also
united Bill B & JC with his theme of how we learn to empathise with others
through literature (or that's my garbled memory).

The arts are absolutely essential for the study
of simulation and mirror neurons - which Lakoff, Gallese & co haven't yet
realised (although I imagine Mark Johnson would be open to it). The reason is
that artists do not just capture any old movements or or any old lines of
speech. They capture *manners* - *typical* movements and *typical*
patterns of speech.

your brain does not just simulate their
particular movement at the given point in time on that canvas - it
simulates and understands their *manner* of movement - and you can get up and
dance like them, and continue their dance, and produce *further* movements
that will be a reasonable likeness of how those dancers might
dance.

Now how your brain does that is an awfully
complex operation, that will repay study, and goes beyond current mirror
simulation studies.

Ditto when a movie or play captures a character's
style of speech well, you can not only simulate/empathise with what they are
immediately saying, but understand their manner, and can creatively produce
further sentences in that style. Mimic them as professional mimics
do.

Scientists don't have the special skills of
artists - required to capture manners.

The area of simulation through the arts is so
huge that there is enough material there to start up the group
again.

Zach: My research covers much of this but draw
stronger conclusions, conclusions suitable for adapting to literary
criticism. I argue that not only is literature analogous to a 'flight
simulator' (I also described how this works, from a neurocognitive
standpoint, and reject some of Oatley's top-down views on this point),
butmore importantly for literary evaluationI argue that 'good' (memorable,
influential) simulators exploit and capture the psychological nuances of
simulated emotional ecologies, and that what distinguishes good from bad
literature has to do with the type, variety, verisimilitude, development,
etc., of emotional ecologies (e.g., the social circumstances contingent on
experiencing 'jealousy' in Shakespeare' s Othello).

I'm starting work on my
chapter exploring simulation now. I hope that by the time Im done people
haven't either scooped or developed in parallel my conclusions, because Ive
been sitting on these arguments for a long time now, although such parallel
developments are beyond my control.

The Secrets of
Storytelling: Why We Love a Good Yarn Our love for telling tales reveals
the workings of the mind By Jeremy Hsu

When Brad Pitt tells Eric
Bana in the 2004 film Troy that "there are no pacts between lions and men,"
he is not reciting a clever line from the pen of a Hollywood screenwriter.
He is speaking Achilles' words in English as Homer wrote them in Greek more
than 2,000 years ago in the Iliad. The tale of the Trojan War has captivated
generations of audiences while evolving from its origins as an oral epic to
written versions and, finally, to several film adaptations. The power of
this story to transcend time, language and culture is clear even today,
evidenced by Troy's robust success around the world.

Popular tales
do far more than entertain, however. Psychologists and neuroscientists have
recently become fascinated by the human predilection for storytelling. Why
does our brain seem to be wired to enjoy stories? And how do the emotional
and cognitive effects of a narrative influence our beliefs and real-world
decisions?

The answers to these questions seem to be rooted in our
history as a social animal. We tell stories about other people and for other
people. Stories help us to keep tabs on what is happening in our
communities. The safe, imaginary world of a story may be a kind of training
ground, where we can practice interacting with others and learn the customs
and rules of society. And stories have a unique power to persuade and
motivate, because they appeal to our emotions and capacity for empathy.

A Good Yarn Storytelling is one of the few human traits that are
truly universal across culture and through all of known history.
Anthropologists find evidence of folktales everywhere in ancient cultures,
written in Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, Chinese, Egyptian and Sumerian. People in
societies of all types weave narratives, from oral storytellers in
hunter-gatherer tribes to the millions of writers churning out books,
television shows and movies. And when a characteristic behavior shows up in
so many different societies, researchers pay attention: its roots may tell
us something about our evolutionary past.

To study storytelling,
scientists must first define what constitutes a story, and that can prove
tricky. Because there are so many diverse forms, scholars often define story
structure, known as narrative, by explaining what it is not. Exposition
contrasts with narrative by being a simple, straightforward explanation,
such as a list of facts or an encyclopedia entry. Another standard approach
defines narrative as a series of causally linked events that unfold over
time. A third definition hinges on the typical narrative's subject matter:
the interactions of intentional agents-characters with minds-who possess
various motivations.

However narrative is defined, people know it
when they feel it. Whether fiction or nonfiction, a narrative engages its
audience through psychological realism-recognizabl e emotions and believable
interactions among characters.

"Everyone has a natural detector for
psychological realism," says Raymond A. Mar, assistant professor of
psychology at York University in Toronto. "We can tell when something rings
false."

But the best stories-those retold through generations and
translated into other languages-do more than simply present a believable
picture. These tales captivate their audience, whose emotions can be
inextricably tied to those of the story's characters. Such immersion is a
state psychologists call "narrative transport."

Researchers have
only begun teasing out the relations among the variables that can initiate
narrative transport. A 2004 study by psychologist Melanie C. Green, now at
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, showed that prior knowledge
and life experience affected the immersive experience. Volunteers read a
short story about a gay man attending his college fraternity's reunion.
Those who had friends or family members who were homosexual reported higher
transportation, and they also perceived the story events, settings and
characters to be more realistic. Transportation was also deeper for
participants with past experiences in fraternities or sororities.
"Familiarity helps, and a character to identify with helps," Green explains.

Other research by Green has found that people who perform better on
tests of empathy, or the capacity to perceive another person's emotions,
become more easily transported regardless of the story. "There seems to be a
reasonable amount of variation, all the way up to people who can get swept
away by a Hallmark commercial," Green says.

In Another's Shoes
Empathy is part of the larger ability humans have to put themselves in
another person's shoes: we can attribute mental states-awareness, intent-to
another entity. Theory of mind, as this trait is known, is crucial to social
interaction and communal living-and to understanding stories.

Children develop theory of mind around age four or five. A 2007
study by psychologists Daniela O'Neill and Rebecca Shultis, both at the
University of Waterloo in Ontario, found that five-year-olds could follow
the thoughts of an imaginary character but that three-year-olds could not.
The children saw model cows in both a barn and a field, and the researchers
told them that a farmer sitting in the barn was thinking of milking the cow
in the field. When then asked to point to the cow the farmer wanted to milk,
three-year-olds pointed to the cow in the barn-they had a hard time
following the character's thoughts to the cow in the field. Five-year-olds,
however, pointed to the cow in the field, demonstrating theory of mind.

Perhaps because theory of mind is so vital to social living, once we
possess it we tend to imagine minds everywhere, making stories out of
everything. A classic 1944 study by Fritz Heider and Mary-Ann Simmel, then
at Smith College, elegantly demonstrated this tendency. The psychologists
showed people an animation of a pair of triangles and a circle moving around
a square and asked the participants what was happening. The subjects
described the scene as if the shapes had intentions and motivations- for
example, "The circle is chasing the triangles." Many studies since then have
confirmed the human predilection to make characters and narratives out of
whatever we see in the world around us.

But what could be the
evolutionary advantage of being so prone to fantasy? "One might have
expected natural selection to have weeded out any inclination to engage in
imaginary worlds rather than the real one," writes Steven Pinker, a Harvard
University evolutionary psychologist, in the April 2007 issue of Philosophy
and Literature. Pinker goes on to argue against this claim, positing that
stories are an important tool for learning and for developing relationships
with others in one's social group. And most scientists are starting to
agree: stories have such a powerful and universal appeal that the
neurological roots of both telling tales and enjoying them are probably tied
to crucial parts of our social cognition.

As our ancestors evolved
to live in groups, the hypothesis goes, they had to make sense of
increasingly complex social relationships. Living in a community requires
keeping tabs on who the group members are and what they are doing. What
better way to spread such information than through storytelling?

Indeed, to this day people spend most of their conversations telling
personal stories and gossiping. A 1997 study by anthropologist and
evolutionary biologist Robin Dunbar, then at the University of Liverpool in
England, found that social topics accounted for 65 percent of speaking time
among people in public places, regardless of age or gender.
Anthropologists note that storytelling could have also persisted in
human culture because it promotes social cohesion among groups and serves as
a valuable method to pass on knowledge to future generations. But some
psychologists are starting to believe that stories have an important effect
on individuals as well-the imaginary world may serve as a proving ground for
vital social skills.

"If you're training to be a pilot, you spend
time in a flight simulator," says Keith Oatley, a professor of applied
cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto. Preliminary research by
Oatley and Mar suggests that stories may act as "flight simulators" for
social life. A 2006 study hinted at a connection between the enjoyment of
stories and better social abilities. The researchers used both self-report
and assessment tests to determine social ability and empathy among 94
students, whom they also surveyed for name recognition of authors who wrote
narrative fiction and nonnarrative nonfiction. They found that students who
had had more exposure to fiction tended to perform better on social ability
and empathy tests. Although the results are provocative, the authors caution
that the study did not probe cause and effect-exposure to stories may hone
social skills as the researchers suspect, but perhaps socially inclined
individuals simply seek out more narrative fiction.

In support for
the idea that stories act as practice for real life are imaging studies that
reveal similar brain ac­tivity during viewings of real people and
animated cha­racters. In 2007 Mar conducted a study using Waking Life, a
2001 film in which live footage of actors was traced so that the characters
appear to be animated drawings. Mar used functional magnetic resonance
imaging to scan volunteers' brains as they watched matching footage of the
real actors and the corresponding animated characters. During the real
footage, brain activity spiked strongly in the superior temporal sulcus and
the temporoparietal junction, areas associated with processing biological
motion. The same areas lit up to a lesser extent for the animated footage.
"This difference in brain activation could be how we distinguish between
fantasy and reality," Mar says.

As psychologists probe our love of
stories for clues about our evolutionary history, other researchers have
begun examining the themes and character types that appear consistently in
narratives from all cultures. Their work is revealing universal similarities
that may reflect a shared, evolved human psyche.

Boy Meets Girl .
A 2006 study by Jonathan Gottschall, an English professor at Washington
& Jefferson College, found relevant depictions of romantic love in
folktales scattered across space and time. The idea of romantic love has not
been traditionally considered to be a cultural universal because of the many
societies in which marriage is mainly an economic or utilitarian
consideration. But Gottschall's study suggests that rather than being a
construct of certain societies, romantic love must have roots in our common
ancestry. In other words, romance-not just sex-has a biological basis in the
brain.

"You do find these commonalities, " Gottschall says. He is
one of several scholars, known informally as literary Darwinists, who assert
that story themes do not simply spring from each specific culture. Instead
the literary Darwinists propose that stories from around the world have
universal themes reflecting our common underlying biology.

Another
of Gottschall's studies published earlier this year reveals a persistent
mind-set regarding gender roles. His team did a content analysis of 90
folktale collections, each consisting of 50 to 100 stories, from societies
running the gamut from industrial nations to hunter-gatherer tribes. They
found overwhelmingly similar gender depictions emphasizing strong male
protagonists and female beauty. To counterbalance the possibility that male
storytellers were biasing gender idealizations, the team also sampled
cultures that were more egalitarian and less patriarchal.

"We
couldn't even find one culture that had more emphasis on male beauty,"
Gottschall notes, explaining that the study sample had three times as many
male as compared with female main characters and six times as many
references to female beauty as to male beauty. That difference in gender
stereotypes, he suggests, may reflect the classic Darwinian emphasis on
reproductive health in women, signified by youth and beauty, and on the
desirable male ability to provide for a family, signaled by physical power
and success.

Other common narrative themes reveal our basic wants
and needs. "Narrative involves agents pursuing some goal," says Patrick Colm
Hogan, professor of English and comparative literature at the University of
Connecticut. "The standard goals are partially a result of how our emotion
systems are set up."

Hogan does not consider himself a literary
Darwinist, but his research on everything from Hindu epic poems such as the
Ramayana to modern film adaptations of Shakespeare supports the idea that
stories reveal something about human emotions seated in the mind. As many as
two thirds of the most respected stories in narrative traditions seem to be
variations on three narrative patterns, or prototypes, according to Hogan.
The two more common prototypes are romantic and heroic scenarios-the former
focuses on the trials and travails of love, whereas the latter deals with
power struggles. The third prototype, dubbed "sacrificial" by Hogan, focuses
on agrarian plenty versus famine as well as on societal redemption. These
themes appear over and over again as humans create narrative records of
their most basic needs: food, reproduction and social status.

Happily Ever After The power of stories does not stop with their
ability to reveal the workings of our minds. Narrative is also a potent
persuasive tool, according to Hogan and other researchers, and it has the
ability to shape beliefs and change minds.

Advertisers have long
taken advantage of narrative persuasiveness by sprinkling likable characters
or funny stories into their commercials. A 2007 study by marketing
researcher Jennifer Edson Escalas of Vanderbilt University found that a test
audience responded more positively to advertisements in narrative form as
compared with straightforward ads that encouraged viewers to think about the
arguments for a product. Similarly, Green co-authored a 2006 study that
showed that labeling information as "fact" increased critical analysis,
whereas labeling information as "fiction" had the opposite effect. Studies
such as these suggest people accept ideas more readily when their minds are
in story mode as opposed to when they are in an analytical mind-set.

Works of fiction may even have unexpected real-world effects on
people's choices. Merlot was one of the most popular red wines among
Americans until the 2005 film Sideways depicted actor Paul Giamatti as an
ornery wine lover who snubbed it as a common, inferior wine. Winemakers saw
a noticeable drop in sales of the red wine that year, particularly after
Sideways garnered national attention through several Oscar nominations.

As researchers continue to investigate storytelling' s power and
pervasiveness, they are also looking for ways to harness that power. Some
such as Green are studying how stories can have applications in promoting
positive health messages. "A lot of problems are behaviorally based," Green
says, pointing to research documenting the influence of Hollywood films on
smoking habits among teens. And Mar and Oatley want to further examine how
stories can enhance social skills by acting as simulators for the brain,
which may turn the idea of the socially crippled bookworm on its head.

One thing is clear-although research on stories has only just begun,
it has already turned up a wealth of information about the social roots of
the human mind-and, in science, that's a happy ending.

Note: This
story was originally printed with the title, "The Secrets of Storytelling" .

Jeff:Wow. I think I missed a bit of this thread (travel and illness excuses), but it is nice to see critical emphasis being placed on mirror neurons and

Message 3 of 4
, Aug 8 4:13 AM

Jeff:Wow. I think I missed a bit of this thread
(travel and illness excuses), but it is nice to see critical emphasis being
placed on mirror neurons and simulation. I agree that this brings together a
couple of different, fundamental, and very important critical threads. It also
looks like these approaches will be helping to rebut the accusations of
reductionism aimed at literary and other artistic Darwinisms

Mirror neurons do provide a whole new framework to
supersede or at any rate complement reductionism. I'm not aware that this has
been realised though. I don't think Lakoff and Johnson realise it.

Reductionism (along with the whole of science)
involves a "fragmented"/"parts" perspective. You're always looking at the
pieces of things. Even when you look at anatomies in science, you are still
looking at them as assemblies of parts.

Simulation and the arts involve a holistic, first
person perspective. When you simulate the Dancers:

you simulate them with your whole body-and-brain
all-at-once. If I ask you to simulate - imagine yourself walking as - say,
(and try it), a flaming diva.. John Wayne... John Travolta...
Madonna... you will immediately start to do this with your whole
body and brain at once. You will start to change your self/persona - which
makes one realise that one's self is one's whole brain-and-body - an integral
unit.

And you can't understand simulation (and how people
respond to the arts) scientifically if you don't recognise this
whole-brain-and-body self. Comments & thoughts v. welcome.

P.S. My hunch is that we won't be able to
understand even inanimate matter - and how it coheres in its myriad, diverse
forms - if we don't understand water, gases etc as *integral wholes* and not
just assemblies of pieces. Machines are assemblies of parts. Natural things and
organisms are integral wholes.

Mike Tintner

It s interesting that embodied, shapeshifting simulation is not only central to how we respond internally to the arts and the world generally, (as distinct BTW

Message 4 of 4
, Aug 9 7:06 AM

It's interesting that embodied, shapeshifting
simulation is not only central to how we respond internally to the arts and the
world generally, (as distinct BTW from how we respond to the sciences), but it
is also a major external subject of the arts in itself - e.g. Jekyll
& Hyde, Clark Kent & Superman et al